"Import Video" always hangs at next-to-last step under Vista

[ambushed]

I’ve tried more technical fora without success, so I’m turning to the SDMB wizards. The Dope has often been able to help where others were not.

I’m having a seemingly intractable problem trying to use Vista’s “Import Video” procedure. Although it worked perfectly a few days ago, now the Vista “Import Video” procedure always hangs forever at the same step.

Here’s what happens:

(1): I turn on and connect the video source (usually my DVR) to my video capture device (Canopus ADVC-50 firewire).

(2): I plug-in the firewire cable to my Dell Inspiron 1526 laptop running Vista Home Premium SP1, then an AutoPlay pop-up window comes up and displays the following 3 options:

Import Video <<-- (this is what I choose)
Capture video – (This doesn’t do what I want)
Start Encoding"
(3): New window comes up with title: “Import Video”

Name: xxx
Import to: (folder)
Format Windows Media Video (single file)
WMV (about 2 GB per hour)"
(4): I press Next, new window title still says: “Import Video”, and the page offers the following 3 options:

Import the entire videotape to my computer
Import the entire videotape and then burn it to a DVD
Only import parts of the videotape to my computer <<-- (This is what I MUST choose)
(5) Then I press Next, and then it hangs forever! The window title shows “Import Video (not responding)”

Nothing I’ve tried will bring it out of the hung state; I end up having to reboot to kill it.

I’ve tried everything I can think of, including intense scanning for malware and running system troubleshooting software such as PC Tune Up and Iolo System Mechanic 7’s deep analysis and fixed all the problems they reported. But it still hangs every time at that same spot.

NOTE 1: This all worked perfectly the first time I tried it a few days ago. And I’ve changed NOTHING other than to fix the problems the the various fix-it tools found. I also tried a system restore, but that didn’t help either.

NOTE 2: This is the only way I want to capture video. There are several other ways to do this or something similar, but this particular way is the ONLY way that provides the feature I’ve been looking for for weeks now: The ability to pause capturing and then “un-pause” it so that it continues to capture to the same file (such as for omitting commercials and other elements I don’t want to capture). I’m aware that I can always edit these things out later, but that is an unacceptable solution for what I’m trying to do. I will be amassing many hours and hours of video, and I do NOT want to have to edit out the hours of material I did not want to capture in the first place!

I have posted this problem all over the web, and no one has replied with anything helpful (they all want me just to capture everything and then edit it down, which is not an acceptable solution, especially considering this is something that worked perfectly a few days ago).

Thanks in advance for any helpful suggestions. I’m a knowledgeable user (I’m a veteran programmer), so if you want me to try anything more technical (such as registry examination/ manipulation and the like), I can probably handle it.

[yoyodyne]

@ambushed

NOTE 2: This is the only way I want to capture video. There are several other ways to do this or something similar, but this particular way is the ONLY way that provides the feature I’ve been looking for for weeks now: The ability to pause capturing and then “un-pause” it so that it continues to capture to the same file (such as for omitting commercials and other elements I don’t want to capture). I’m aware that I can always edit these things out later, but that is an unacceptable solution for what I’m trying to do. I will be amassing many hours and hours of video, and I do NOT want to have to edit out the hours of material I did not want to capture in the first place!

I don’t know how to help with your problem, but based on what you’ve said I’d reconsider this. It is far easier to quickly scrub through recorded video and delete what you don’t want to keep than it is to remove it real-time.

[ambushed]

@yoyodyne

I don’t know how to help with your problem, but based on what you’ve said I’d reconsider this. It is far easier to quickly scrub through recorded video and delete what you don’t want to keep than it is to remove it real-time.

Thank you for your reply, but I find it very much otherwise.

First, you need to store hundreds of gigs of stored video (space I do not have), when I only want to keep less than one half of all that. I’m not only editing out commercials, but also many source segments I do not want. I cannot automate that process.

Second, you’ve got to go into a loop perhaps three hundred times of launching your video editor (I use Ulead VideoStudio 111.5 Plus), load the next of 300 files, edit out 50-60% of it, all in short segments each, then render the edited remaining segments together, all of which takes around 30 minutes minimum for each file!

YIKES!

Think of the weeks of work I’d have to do just removing stuff I didn’t want to capture in the first place! And with no room to work with anyway.

Sorry, but I need a far better solution. One that I’ve already seen work ideally and which it should be able to do again if I get this hang solved.

[Jayn_Newell]

Why are you using a video editor for that? There is a faster way (although it doesn’t solve your space issues). I plug this a lot, but VirtualDub will allow you to delete the segments you don’t want and sew the remaining bits together with the ‘direct stream copy’. Much faster than an actual render, and you can do it with lossless and lossy files. I just did it with a half-hour XviD file, cut out about half and had the rest out in about 7 seconds. All told less than a minute. It’s also a great program for transcoding.

That said, you won’t be able to do it with .wmv files. (Which leads me to wondering why you’re using that and not something in .avi.) The program can handle a lot of formats, but that’s not one of them.

[yoyodyne]

@Jayn_Newell

Why are you using a video editor for that? There is a faster way (although it doesn’t solve your space issues). I plug this a lot, but VirtualDub will allow you to delete the segments you don’t want and sew the remaining bits together with the ‘direct stream copy’. Much faster than an actual render, and you can do it with lossless and lossy files. I just did it with a half-hour XviD file, cut out about half and had the rest out in about 7 seconds. All told less than a minute. It’s also a great program for transcoding.

That said, you won’t be able to do it with .wmv files. (Which leads me to wondering why you’re using that and not something in .avi.) The program can handle a lot of formats, but that’s not one of them.

I primarily record as MPEG-2 and use VideoReDo for editing. It’s also fast and easy to use, and doesn’t require re-encoding. I also like Womble which works well too.

ambushed, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort by getting more disk space and changing your workflow.

[ambushed]

@Jayn_Newell

Why are you using a video editor for that? There is a faster way (although it doesn’t solve your space issues). I plug this a lot, but VirtualDub will allow you to delete the segments you don’t want and sew the remaining bits together with the ‘direct stream copy’. Much faster than an actual render, and you can do it with lossless and lossy files. I just did it with a half-hour XviD file, cut out about half and had the rest out in about 7 seconds. All told less than a minute. It’s also a great program for transcoding.

That said, you won’t be able to do it with .wmv files. (Which leads me to wondering why you’re using that and not something in .avi.) The program can handle a lot of formats, but that’s not one of them.

Thanks for the info.

As you said, I’d still have a serious disk space problem, so that still doesn’t solve my problem. As for why .wmv, Vista provide three output file options, two of which (dv and avi?) produced very large files, with the third being .wmv which uses far less disk space (I’m willing to lose significant image quality in the interest of minimizing storage space).

So I either have to get this working (and please recall it previously worked perfectly), or find another tool that lets the user pause during recording and later “un-pause” it without creating a new file or folder each time.

I tried VirtualDub’s capture facilities for this, and couldn’t get it to work as I wished. But VDub possesses a highly confusing and overly complex user interface, so who knows? As an experienced programmer of 30 years who has developed many user interfaces, I must say that it’s one of the most baffling and poorly documented pieces of software I’ve ever used, demonstrating unbelievably poor user interface design.

But I don’t want to get into a debate on that. I just want to know how to resolve the problem laid out in my OP.

Thanks

[Jayn_Newell]

@ambushed

As for why .wmv, Vista provide three output file options, two of which (dv and avi?) produced very large files, with the third being .wmv which uses far less disk space (I’m willing to lose significant image quality in the interest of minimizing storage space).

Ah, I should’ve known. WMM has the same problem (which is one of the reasons I bought a better program).

[squeegee]

@ambushed

(and please recall it previously worked perfectly)

Can you think of anything that changed since it worked perfectly a few days ago? Did you install a new app or drivers that may be interfering? Do you maybe have auto-updates turned on in Vista, and MS installed something behind your back?

ETA: is this your thread? Apparently you’ve tried “rewinding” your system already.